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The Echo of Sand

Overview

Spanning two decades and unfolding simultaneously in Beirut and Brooklyn, The Echo of Sandis a brave and honest novel about resilience and reconciliation. Born into a land of olive oil and guns, Saleh and Samir Salam are twin brothers separated by Lebanon’s civil war. Swept away in a Marine helicopter, Saleh stares in terror at his brother, Samir, who is left behind. He leaves a city where the bombs have torn open the sky and made concrete buildings fly like sand on a windy beach day. After twenty years of living in New York, Saleh returns to Beirut longing for the comfort of a childhood home. At the same time, Samir leaves Beirut for New York to live a life found only in his dreams.

In Beirut, the city is no longer kind to Saleh. Living between conflicting cultures, American and Arab, Saleh finds himself a stranger searching for his identity. As a wealthy and educated man, he tries to fix his family’s lives when they do not consider them broken.

In the meantime, Samir arrives in Brooklyn excited to prosper in a land of money and celebrities. Instead of pursuing a career as a film director—his dream—he struggles as a truck driver. His only comfort in New York is his friendship with Abeba, a cleaning woman from Kenya. Together they balance their loneliness for home with a craving for American success. After encountering racism, Samir returns to Beirut where he finds respect in a motherland that he thought for so long had denied him the right to live.

At the same time, Saleh returns to New York after discovering that Beirut is far from the brilliant colors he once saw in his imagination.

Crisscrossing between Beirut and Brooklyn,Saleh and Samir are joined in spirit by twin strands of conflict and personal struggle while both search for home.The Echo of Sand is a story that challenges the idea that home is defined by blood, land and family, and seeks through its characters to reveal how war displaces us and redefines for us what home really means.